NEW DELHI: From Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla becoming the first Indian to visit the International Space Station (ISS) to the country getting the first private earth imaging satellite constellation, the Indian space sector added many firsts in 2025. The year 2026 will be marked by critical milestones beginning with the first uncrewed Ganganyaan mission.
The space missions in 2025 were spearheaded by both government-led ISRO and private companies, which together bolstered the space economy at approximately $13 billion. The sector aims to capture 8-10 percent of the global commercial space market by the next decade.
2025 began with the successful docking of the SPADEX (Space Docking Experiment) satellites — SDX01, the Chaser, and SDX02, the Target — weighing about 220 kg each, in January. With this, India became the fourth nation to ace the space docking technology.
ISRO also marked its 100th launch from the Sriharikota spaceport. The mission, on January 29, successfully placed the NVS-02 navigation satellite into the planned Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit, aboard the GSLV rocket.
The Union Cabinet also approved the establishment of the Third Launch Pad (TLP) at Satish Dhawan Space Centre of ISRO at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
Space startup Digantara launched Space Camera for Object Tracking (SCOT) satellite aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-12 mission to enhance space safety and track Resident Space Objects (RSOs).
Bengaluru-based Pixxel also launched its first three satellites of its Firefly constellation — India’s 1st private satellite constellation. In February, ISRO released the first major batch of scientific data from its solar mission Aditya-L1, including unprecedented views of a solar flare “kernel”. In March, ISRO delivered the first batches of two 32-bit microprocessors, VIKRAM3201 and KALPANA3201, to the Semiconductor Laboratory, Chandigarh, for use in launch vehicle systems.
In June, Shukla’s historic 18-day mission to the ISS — a first ever for an Indian and the second to travel to space, after 40 long years following Rakesh Sharma in 1984 — became the most defining moment in the space sector in 2025.
In November, ISRO successfully launched the CMS-03, the heaviest communication satellite ever launched at 4,400 kg. The mission also achieved the first-ever in-space restart of the C25 cryogenic engine.
In December, the LVM3-M6 mission successfully deployed the BlueBird Block-2 satellite, the largest commercial communication satellite in Low Earth Orbit. (IANS)